


space cowboy disaster zone

by twofoldAxiom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Western, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Smut, M/M, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:54:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8265034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: Your name is Karkat Vantas, and these nights you eke out a quiet living on Antoren-3, helping around the Caltira Inn or scavenging out in the rust plains. It’s a simple life, and the only excitement you get for the most part is from the stories of other scavengers, a handful of bar fights, and the occasional salvageable wreck. Fresh wrecks, you’ve only seen a handful of times, and when John spots the telltale streak of light from a distant crash in the middle of a rust storm, you’re eager to get first dibs on whatever it might contain, the elements be damned.You don’t expect a survivor.





	1. An Intro in Rust

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely inspired by jumpingjacktrash’s “Bowerbird”, with aesthetic inspiration from Firefly, Borderlands, Guardians of the Galaxy, and probably parts of The Force Awakens, though none of these are actually relevant to the setting. After reading Bowerbird, listening to a bunch of Borderlands tracks, and watching bits and bobs of all the above, I decided to get down to actually writing this.
> 
> It took an obscenely long time, but here’s the beginning. Thanks to all my beta readers, who will probably continue to do an amazing job, and everyone that I whined, cajoled, and otherwise bothered about with, into reading this story, and, you know, everyone who dealt with me throwing art and ideas onto tumblr without giving this whole thing with it.
> 
> Seriously, you’re all champs.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> (ALSO if you see something wrong, don't hesitate to bring it up; I'm terrible at editing my own work and even with betas I can't catch everything. Also also, the rating might change in future chapters, because I'm trash.)

It feels like you’d  _ only just _ closed your eyes to the sound of the fan rattling beside you, in the grainy-brown darkness of thin-walled block at midday, when you wake up again to the considerably cooler, deeper darkness of night.

Night falls quickly here, you remind yourself, despite the distinct feeling that the unforgiving sunlight will persist until the end of time. The heat dissipates not long after that, which always comes as a bit of an unpleasant surprise to you when you sleep the way you do, outside of any proper recuperacoon, on a pile of junk and sweaty fabric that you’ve gathered over the past three or so sweeps. You roll away from the jittery heat-dispersion oscillator, shivering, groping blindly in the sudden dark until you find the switch to the lamp by grazing a patch of bare, live wire with your knuckles.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” You hiss, but you manage to turn the light on without any further incident. The bare, white bulb makes everything in your block look washed out and filthy, which despite your best efforts to keep the rust flakes out from the window, isn’t a far-off descriptor. Red-brown dust like your own blood drying coats everything in a layer of itching metal, no matter how many torn rags you use to block off the cracks in the walls, and the sunlight bleached the colour out of the few photographs and posters you’ve managed to keep despite all this time.

Groaning, you rub your hand over your face. It’s tempting to bundle up in one of the thicker blankets and go back to sleep, but two things convince you to shake it off and put a piece of lightning gum between your molars. The first is dreams; sleeping in the cold always gives you the worst ones, warped memories from before you came to this planet. The second is work, because Benna, for all her good will, doesn’t take freeloaders.

The gum does its work fast. The sharp, bitter taste and the flood of caffeine on your tongue wake you up better than a slap to the face, although it makes you grimace just as much. You gulp, cough, swallow some of the tepid water you’ve left in a bottle on the floor before wiping your mouth and digging around for a reasonably clean shirt. Nothing stays clean around here, you swear, but you put on your gloves and your toolbelt and your boots, drape a strip of cloth approximating a scarf over your shoulders and your goggles around your neck, and drag your sorry ass down the stairs.

“Hey, Kit.” Benna grins and raises an arm at you as you pass her by at the foot of the stairs, both hands laden with cracked mugs full of frothing, homebrewed alcohol and her great, warm bulk nearly taking up the whole narrow landing. You grunt at her as you pass, waving hello before she hip checks you so hard that you’re nearly smacked into the wall. To most of the inhabitants of Caltira, this little speck of close-knit backwater-within-backwater, your glare would be enough to make them walk faster, but Benna just grins and shoulders open the door to the tavern.

Any momentary ire aside, you follow her in and help her serve the drinks to the few patrons who haven’t gone out to start searching through the frigid rust plains for anything they can bring back to town just yet. In a bit you’ll be out there too, hunting around for wrecks in the dark. It’s late already, though, judging by the starry darkness outside, the makeshift lamps hung out on the lines that you can see out the window. Your whole back stiffens at the thought that anything out there in the dark might be claimed by now.

Still, you’re the last to leave. You’re almost always the last to leave; living here with Benna, that means chores when you can’t find anything good, and you haven’t found anything good in weeks. Not for lack of trying, but you admit you don’t begrudge the others the longer hours in the rust plains. When they’ve all left,  _ then  _ you sit down against her side and eat breakfast- for you, anyway, dinner for her. Tonight is the same, bubbling stew she’s had over the stove for a week now, and he slop is greasy, sticks to your lips, tastes of salted fat and wild, grassy herbs. But you realize you’re hungry on the first spoonful, and even though you know it’ll make you sick you eat too fast and end up gulping back your spit, trying not to look like you’re about to puke as you take the bowl and the spoon to the wash basin and scour your mouth with a swig of something that burns and tastes powerfully of more fermented herbs.

Benna chuckles behind you, taking her meal slower. You spit and wipe your mouth.

“Just drink some water, Kit. I need you alive to do more work around here.” She hums over you when you scrub at your tongue in the shard of mirror, and to spite her you finish a whole bottle and try not to heave. It only makes her laugh, though there’s something sharp in her eye that dares you to throw up, see what happens, while you stand there clutching the basin’s metal rim. She only shakes her head and stands to head to her workbench. “Be back before the sun comes up.” She says, and you nod, wrapping yourself in your coat and stepping out into the street. Cold, dry air slaps you in the face, rust flakes making you sneeze and itch.

You wrap your scarf around your mouth and nose and pull up your goggles as you walk around to the back of the tavern, up to a tarp-covered mound weighed down by some rubbish crates. One of them you shove out of the way with your foot, and you don’t bother with the rest, just tug the tarp free from the opposite corner and toss it over to reveal Benna’s beat up little rover, the only transport you have through the wasteland. It’s an easy, practiced thing to settle yourself into the worn cushions of the makeshift seat, key in the engine, and slowly start making your way over the bumpy terrain towards the rust plains. In the distance, you hear feral barkfiends and their bigger, nastier cousins, howling and fighting over food. Somewhere out there is probably a cottonbeast being torn apart. You can ignore it better now.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, more often known as Vantas to the other scavengers, Karkat to the couple or so that you’re actually on speaking terms with, and Kit to good old Benna, the single bartender and primary salvage trader of Caltira. You live in what used to be her storage block and still mostly is, though you’ve hung up posters and old photos that you can’t bring yourself to throw away, and put together a decent pile in the corner by the window, amid the yet-unusable junk that she lets you fuck around with, not that you can do much more than rig up shitty lighting.

You arrived on Antoren-3 just about three sweeps ago, when you were only eight sweeps old. Half a sweep before that you’d joined the threshecutioner cadets, but you weren’t so starry eyed by then to believe that you would a) Be spared your mutation once they actually saw you bleed, or b) Good enough to make it through the training in the first place. You didn’t even last a week; as soon as everyone was set up and you could get alone, you stowed away on a supply ship.

You’re lucky the captain took a shine to you. You didn’t like him much, but you owe your life to him and his colourblind cadre of a semi-functional crew. Sometimes you can tell yourself you miss them, in the middle of summer when you’re too stupid with the heat to tell yourself otherwise. You at least miss eating a little more, and getting laid semi-regularly, and candy. God, you miss chocolate. You miss chocolate so much you could kill for it.

When you’re not scavenging, you’re running errands, or tinkering, or helping her around the tavern, so despite the lack of excitement, you’ve got enough going on that you’re rarely bored. Sometimes you snuggle up with her in her block on the coldest nights, and you tell each other about the worlds you left behind.

(Benna’s system was destroyed in a supernova. She tells you its name, fondly, like the name of an old friend, and you bite back the thought that she was lucky to never see it taken over by your species.)

Up ahead and illuminated by the triple moons is the massive, alien expanse of the rust plains, marked by the stripped down wreck of one of the first ships to ever touch down on Antoren-3. It’s nothing but a skeleton of corroded bars now, even the plating of the ship having been torn off to make walls for the hives around here. The wind whistles through the hollows of it, too heavy for anyone to move and slowly coming apart with the rust. Beyond that is more wreckage, some old and some new, their age marked by how much scavengers like you have taken from them.

You can see lights bobbing in the sharp, shredding wind, from other scavengers using laser cutters to take apart bits of the newer ships. The rover makes enough noise even in the howl that a couple of them look up from their work to see you coming.You park just a few feet away and strap a battery pack to your hip. It’s not actually a good idea to use a cutter still attached to the pack since that can make it overheat, burn out, and maybe if you’re  _ really  _ unlucky, explode. Still, it makes the work go faster and you haven’t had to replace your trusty little photon drill just yet.

The metallic sand crunches underfoot, in a way you feel more than you hear as you approach. The other scavengers have gone back to work, but one of them ambles over to you, clapping a pale, heavy hand on your shoulder despite your warning growl. He tries to mumble something through the motorcycle mask he wears, then gives up and tugs it down to speak through a mouthful of misshapen buckteeth.

“We finally managed to get past the hull.” John squeezes your shoulder and guides you into the bitten-out side of the hull, into the still-cooling cavern of the ship’s interior. “Jane and Rose are already in the upper story so we don’t have any more lights, but you know, troll vision or whatever. You’ll find something they miss.” He says, corners of his eyes crinkling as he grins. “I’ll be out here cutting out more wiring where I can actually see, yeah?”

You roll your eyes. “Anything new come down?” You say instead of answering, and he shrugs. You sigh and pull your goggles down so you can see better; they’ve been sun bleached over time, but they’re still too dark to work with indoors. Waving him over your shoulder, you pad towards what would have once been a door hatch but is now more of a trapdoor and kneel beside it, scrubbing sand away with your palm to check the seal. Tight, not even the sharp little grains get through, and you hook up your photon drill to the battery pack and get to work sawing through the rubber.

The burning rubber stinks even through your scarf, and while the laser doesn’t bubble and spark like the gas torch you’ve seen Rose use for heavy duty metalwork, it’s bright enough to leave spots in your eyes. You stop every now and again to give your eyes and the heating metal in your hand a break, before you start again, until at last you’ve cut through the seal and the whole thing drops to the lower floor with a wall-rattling thunk. John, as usual, is the first to head inside at the sound, long loops of cable slung over his wireframe shoulders.

The smell wafting from the  _ hole _ is worse than you’d imagined. You grind your teeth as you peer into the dark, as Jane and Rose clamber down from whatever godforsaken heights of the wreckage they’ve been in, chattering to each other with armfuls of supplies they’d dug out from wherever, repair and medicine kits, canteens of water, sealed packets of food. The smell from below spreads through the tight chamber fast, the salty-sour stink of something that’s been rotting in its own fluids without the sun to dry it all out. You curl your upper lip in disgust, press your hand over your mouth and nose and gesture for one of them to give you a light, and Jane hands you her fingerlight in silence, trying to breathe through her mouth behind her mask. You shake it a couple of times and turn it on, poking your head into the hole and turning it around.

The wreck had come down nose first, a fourth of it buried in the dirt and re-entry heat glassing the ground for a good stretch around. You’d thought it big enough that the cockpit would stay mostly whole and it had been a while enough without signs of life that you’d thought somehow, some way, whoever was inside the ship- and it was clearly a ship that contained people- had gotten out. The wind outside could have brushed away their footsteps, buried their bodies somewhere else in the wasteland. In retrospect, Jane and Rose finding food and water overhead should have been a sign.

The smells are more distinct when you’ve got your head in. It reeks of burnt metal and charred flesh in the cramped space, all of it laced with that awful, meaty rot. You look around until you can see the blackened, bloated shapes of what had once been the passengers. “I count three bodies.” You say, just loud enough that the others can hear you through your hand covering your mouth. “It’s a human and two drakes, and most of the equipment is scorched too. I’d say re-entry did them in.”


	2. Re: Intro, Disappointing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will be spaced out semi-regularly from here out, with luck and a lot of hard work.

There’s silence, and you’re not sure if it’s for the dead or something else. Humans and their kinship with strangers never really caught on with you even when so much else has. You push yourself back up and lean back on your heels before dropping to sit with a thud. “What do we do about them?”

“John could go down there and get the bodies.” Jane volunteers, more solemn than you’ve seen her in a long time. She looks down into the dark. “He’s the strongest here next to myself, so he could lift them, and the three of us together won’t have much trouble pulling him back up. I just shan’t feel right leaving them down there while we pull this ship apart around their ears, even if they _ are _ dead.”

You’d rather leave them to it and look for something better, but there’s hardly ever any arguing with Jane. John looks concerned, almost about to protest, but a pleading look to him from Jane (you vaguely remember, they’re siblings, hatchmates, twins possibly) settles it and he just sighs and shrugs with a faint little smile, unlooping the cables from his shoulders. Rose takes them and begins to weave, and Jane smiles, crinkling the corners of her eyes.

“ _ Thank  _ you, John.” Jane says, and he looks a little like he’s about to crack a tasteless joke when you cough.

“That’s real fucking sweet, but I’d like to get back to town before the wind buries our equipment.” You growl. John grins.

“And that’s the most you’ve said all night! Good for you, Karkat!” He chuckles, a sharp gleam in his eye, and you can practically smell the pitch boiling. Jane puts a hand on your shoulder before you can toss back an actual pitch flirtation, and John cringes, still stifling a laugh. You roll your eyes. You’re not up to explaining how her stopping you from flirting with him isn’t actually ashen, or you’d probably invite it.

“Much as I do enjoy playful banter between friends, Karkat is actually right, and despite popular belief I’d rather not spend more time than necessary here in the cold.” Rose adds, helpfully holding out her work, and John slips the new loops over his head and arms, tightening them over his chest. She checks the knots and nods, a head shorter than him and Jane and thus patting him on the back rather than the shoulder. “Do hurry, John. We might be in for another storm tonight.”

“Well, shit.” You mutter, as you take hold of the cable with Jane and Rose, and start lowering John into the hole. You look to the hole leading outside and note that the other scavengers have already left, the lights of their respective vehicles bobbing in the distance. You hear John gagging and refocus.

“Phew! I don’t know how you do it, Karkat, but my eyes are actually watering down here.” He calls up, and you and the girls give the line more slack as he walks until he tugs twice. You’ve all lowered each other into pits before; it’s an easy, practiced thing to pull him back up, though you just about drop him again when he pokes the first corpse’s eyeless head up instead of his own. He laughs and pushes the body the rest of the way up, like the worst turd you’ve ever seen in your life, and this isn’t the first time you and the others have had to fetch bodies before.

“There are three bodies and three vehicles.” Rose says when John finishes fishing them out and untangling himself from the cable. You and John groan in unison, and Jane giggles. You glare at Jane.

“Well, I do suppose you two shall just have to drive closer to each other than usual if you don’t want to head all the way home alone with nothing for company but a body each.” Jane’s discomfort is clear, but she’ll be lucky enough, for a certain measure of the word lucky, to have John in the jeep with her. Rose makes a face, or rather her left eye twitches nearly imperceptibly in a way you’ve all come to see as her equivalent of balking and retching like a lesser being might.

You look at the bodies with your hands on your hips and scowl. If you hadn’t found them, you’d have had the time to look for something more interesting, more worthwhile; something you could trade with Benna to get out of kitchen duty for a little while. John’s cables and the girls’ rations will be worth trading for things they might need, or just to keep, but all you’ve found is bodies to bury; bodies you don’t even really care about. You look down into the stinking hole once more and wonder if you might find anything worthwhile down there tomorrow night.

John must notice the look, because he nudges you in the arm. You scrub the phantom feeling of his touch off with the palm of your glove and scowl harder. “Help me get this in the rover.” You tell Rose. “I’ll help you load yours, too.”

“Thank you very much, Karkat.” She says, with only the faintest hint of irony. Her glance to John twinkles with her personal brand of subdued mirth. “At least someone on this colony is still a gentleman, no matter how gruff on the outside.”

“Haha, whatever you say, Rose.” He answers, shrugging, and that’s all there is to it.

Jane and John load their “passenger” first, one of the drakes, tossed unceremoniously into the back of their buggy before they cover up the body in a beat-up old blanket and coil some cables before dropping them on top, as if it- he- was just another lump of cargo; as if, you think, they’re trying to forget he’s there. Rose is a little touchier about her charge, the other drake, as you take them under the arms and she takes them around the legs, and the both of you lower them into the back of her hovercart. She, too, covers it up with a blanket, crinkling her nose as the blanket and her fingers stain with soot. But she carefully lays a strip of metal on its side between the body and some free space before packing her finds into the crevice, wiping her hands down on her shirt.

It hits you, then. “Why am I the one carrying the human back?” You ask. Rose looks up at you with a little “hmm?” of curiosity, lavender eyes luminous in the dark as she looks up at you. “I mean it. You’re the ones who wanted to bring them back, and I assume it’s because one of the corpses is human. Why am I doing it?”

“She’s the smallest body, and you have the least space in the rover.” She shrugs, puts on her helmet, slides up the reflective visor so you can see her eyes and nose and just barely hear her over the wind. “Common, pragmatic sense is all.”

She looks out into the distance where you can see a sand cloud forming, and sets her shoulders before sliding down her visor again. She must have said something, but the wind is too strong now and snatches away whatever she might have said. The final body is lifted into your passenger seat and buckled in so it doesn’t lean against you (even you, with all the shit Alternia put you through, would find that morbid). With that done, she swings a leg over the hovercart’s seat and ignites the antigrav panels, the flat discs unfolding from the sides and stabilizing it as it lifts a foot into the air.

You, you’re landbound on the rover, but the wheels are easier to work with when it runs out of gas than those panels, you think. You wrap your scarf more tightly around your mouth and nose, pull up your goggles and get in the seat, turning the key. You nod to Rose and you both start heading back home, you trundling along and her close beside you. The wind stings your face and ears where your scarf can’t cover, and you know tonight’s storm is going to be bad. The lights of home are dimmed, even, the hanging lanterns brought in from the wind. Too bad for the bodies, they’ll have to stay outside until it passes, because no one will be leaving their homes until the rust storm passes.

Thinking about them, you can’t shake the bitter notion that this is a waste of resources and time. You could have at least left the drakes. You know the humans don’t care much for the species either, even if there are more drakes than humans in this town.  _ You  _ hardly care, beyond the most fleeting pity, and Benna is one; but they’re not Benna, they’re dead strangers and you should have left them in their grave. The cockpit wouldn’t have had anything worth taking anyway, not with the state it was in.

You could have at  _ least  _ asked John to share some cable, so you wouldn’t have nothing to show for cutting through that seal but a dead woman.

At the edge of the town, where the road runs straight through the rows of buildings, Rose drives down the main road towards the mechanics shop while you behind the hives head back to the tavern. You park the rover in its usual spot, cover it in the tarp and hold down the bits of fabric with the crates like usual. The corpse, you grimace as you tug it out of its seat and roll it into a frayed old tablecloth that Benna threw into the trash. You hope that doesn’t make the body stink worse when it’s time to uncover it later, but it’d be too morbid to leave it uncovered even for you, and you don’t want it stinking up the rover

Benna meets you at the door, silhouetted by the grimy, yellowing lights she uses for the kitchen. “Find anything good for me, Kit?” She asks, and you shake your head. She doesn’t touch you like some might, knows you don’t like it. Instead, she tuts and shakes her head, wiping her hands on a nearby rag and directing you towards the magnet chamber. “Third time this week. Maybe you’re losing your touch.”

“I found bodies.” You say, and she stops, glancing at you with a raised eyebrow and a questioningly curled lip. You stand in the magnet chamber and turn around slowly, letting the electrified panes do their work, pulling most of the dust off of you. What it can’t get at, you shake off or pat down with your filthy hands. “Two drakes and a human, we’re going to bury them after the storm.”

“Huh.” Is all she responds with, as you pull off your boots and pour dirt out of them, freeing your toes from their gritty embrace.

“I’ll find something soon.” You tell her, and begin to carry your exhausted body upstairs. You pause halfway up to regard her. “Let me out early tomorrow, I  _ swear  _ I’ll find something.”

“Not if that storm holds.” She says. You grumble, but you’re too tired to fight her.

The wind rattles on the metal wall of your block, and the tin roof. You stuff more rags into the cracks to stop the whistling wind before it drives you mad. The storm isn’t here yet, but it will be soon, probably another few minutes; you can see the cloud looming closer and closer, and you shut your window and hold it in place with a twist of wire. You still resent it, but it was smart to get moving when you did. You tear up more rags from one of your various blankets, and stuff them into the cracks between the shutters, too.

Sighing, you strip down to your underwear and drop into your pile, wincing as you lie down on a loose spring. You dig it out from under you and toss it into a corner, before turning over and grabbing the nearby radio. It’s a piece of shit that you dug out of a fighter and Rose’s sister fixed up, and Benna wouldn’t trade it, so you’ve kept it since. The others had found radios like it before, all taken to Roxy for repair, none taken to Benna despite what they might be worth.

You put the makeshift headset over your horns, tying it in place at the bases, and turn the generator on the side of the radio until you see the battery light up. You start fiddling with the knobs until you can hear someone speaking. Static. Static. “… and then I said that’s the most he’s said all night, good for him! He seemed kind of pissy about that, but he’s pissy about everything. Hey, Roxy, you still there?”

“Roxy isn’t.” You mutter into the receiver, and you hear John go “oh, shit!” before he gathers himself. You grin a little. “I, however, am, and I’m perfectly fucking cognizant of your human ‘sarcasm’, so fuck you, whatever your shitty joke was supposed to mean.”

“I love you too, Karkat.” He chuckles, and you hiss into the receiver so loud that he squeals.

You spend hours like that, the others slowly trickling into the frequency or just sharing a receiver. The wind howls outside, rattling the walls of Caltira’s settlements, and another night goes by. You’re not actually aware of when exactly you fall asleep.


	3. Starlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly-earlier-than-planned release of this chapter, to apologize for all the days I've been missing with NaNo. I'm still working on it!
> 
> NOTE: You may have gotten a new chapter e-mail for chapter four early. That was a mistake, I accidentally posted a chapter of a different fic here. Whoops!

You wake, tasting dirt, to the crackle of your radio. The headset buzzing against your horns makes you grind your teeth until you loosen the bent wiring and adjust it around your ears, twitching the makeshift antenna on the radio itself this way and that until you can catch snatches of words again. “…kat, hey, you there? Come in, Karkat.” John’s voice is crackly with static, or maybe just the sound of the storm still blowing outside; you chew your lip as you fiddle until he sounds as clear as he ever gets. “Hey, Karkat, if you can’t hear me you should-“

You fiddle with the knobs a little more. “You’re loud and clear, Egbert.”

“Too bad, I had something good that time. Anyway, the storm’s still going strong but I think something else is going on out there. There were a bunch of flashes and a hell of a lot of noise. I’m surprised you slept through it! My radio went dead for a while there, but I could still hear you snoring before it did.”

Sounds like the storm’s here in full. You grumble into the receiver. “It’s probably static lightning? You realize those are completely normal weather patterns, right?” You dig a screw out from between a pair of worn seat cushions you’d ripped out of a cockpit one time and flick it onto the crates you use as a work bench. “You’ve lived here longer than I have. If you tell me you’ve never seen lightning caused by a rust storm before, I call hoofbeast-“

“ _ No, _ Karkat, it was something  _ big.  _ It’s too dangerous to poke my head out again right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a fresh crash.” The both of you pause, you in surprise and John in what you’re sure is self-satisfaction at getting you to shut up. You doubt it’d be a fresh crash, but the possibility always gets your blood pumping, the idea that you and yours might find something good before anyone else gets a crack at it. You hope it’s the kind of crash that splits a ship so you don’t have to waste precious time digging through the hull.

“Where do you think it landed?” You ask, and he snorts. “What’s so fucking funny?”

“Nothing, Mister Oh-it’s-probably-just-lightning. I didn’t even confirm that it was a crash, just said it was possible.”

You growl. “Then don’t be a nookstain and tell me what the fuck you saw! Holy shit, John, it’s not hard to put together the fact that the sooner you tell me the sooner we can put this conversation down like the rabid barkfiend disgrace to communication that it is.” You huff, and you hear him snicker on the other end at your expense. You’re letting him rile you up and it makes your insides twist hotly. His tone when he speaks again is almost solemn, though, like when you found the bodies.

“Okay, no jokes right now, are you  _ sure  _ that’s what you’d do with this conversation if I told you?” It takes you aback just a little, the tinge of playful, thinly-veiled concern you’ve heard him use when Jane is about to get in a fight. “Karkat, come on, we’re friends. We’ve been friends for almost as long as you’ve been here, even if we’re both kind of a pain in the ass to each other! It’s  _ dangerous.  _ And you’re usually really careful, which is great, but you’re also kind of an asshole and if I told you it was a crash, you’d go out there to take a look because Benna keeps you cooped up over there. If I didn’t tell you it was a crash you’d just assume I was lying and do it anyway to spite me.”

“… Not true.” You mutter. “I don’t do things specifically to spite you.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s why you tried to drink me under the table that one time before I told you fruit syrup doesn’t get humans high like you guys.” He sighs, and you’re not sure if it’d be with a long-suffering glance upwards or an amused tilt of the lips.

You try not to think about his mouth too hard, instead pressing on. “Are you going to tell me or not?” There’s silence, contemplative and tense, before he speaks again.

“Wait for me over there, okay?” He says instead, and you hear a crackling boom that rolls across the sky and makes the walls shake, makes his voice on the other end of the line come out fuzzy, like trying to hear with a concussion. That was definitely thunder. “I’ll,” Static. “over, and” Static. “talk about it. Okay? Karkat, can you still hear me?”

“I can still hear you.” You answer, and then he chuckles and you hear him shuffling around on the other end, probably getting his clothes ready. You figure you should probably get dressed too, though not yet as though you’re going out. You answer to Benna after all, and while not being your own troll eats at you sometimes, you need to keep on her good side. 

Without her would be worse, you tell yourself. You hope whatever news John brings doesn’t fuck things up for you too much.

Downstairs is empty and dark, but hot with baked air. The floor is strewn with sand from under the door, swirls of it crunching underfoot as you walk to one of the tables and wipe some of the dirt off. It’s weird being up before you know the sun has gone down, leaves a weird tiredness in your bones as you draw aimless circles in the cracked linoleum. Still, you wouldn’t be able to go to sleep if you wanted to, not now that you’re waiting for someone.

You come close, though; close enough that when you hear the wind wailing through the open door, you jump. John is a figure all in brown in the doorway, and rust flakes sting your eyes as you stagger out of the chair to wrestle the door back into place with him, slumping against it when it finally clicks back into place. He shakes dirt out of his hair, the only part of him exposed besides his forehead and a strip of his neck, and as usual he tries to say something through his mask before remembering that you can’t hear jack shit through it.

“You’re going out in that?” He asks when he gets that mask and his own goggles off, wiping some of the grit off his grimy face as he regards you. “You’ll get ripped apart out there.”

“So it  _ is  _ a crash.” You say, flatly. He sputters, but your thoughts are already going at a rate measured in lightyears; you’re running through how hard it will be to get there in this storm, how much damage it might cause to Benna’s rover if you do. You don’t even know where it landed. John’s stopped talking. “Tell me where it is.”

“No.” He does that thing where you can tell he’s just a few more prods away from an outburst, where he looks shocked at everything instead of angry, as though he’s had some kind of horrifying realization.

“Egbert.” You say, very slowly, shoulders slightly raised, useless horns slightly lowered. “Tell me where the crash is.”

“Karkat,  _ no _ . Nope. Not gonna happen.” He covers his ears with his hands. “Nah, not happening, I can’t hear you, whatever it is you’re trying to say about going out in a fucking rust storm is being completely ignored as of right now, please leave a message.”

He starts humming to block you out. Somehow, instead of losing it, you take a page out of Lalonde’s book. “Alright.” You say.

John stops his noise to drop his hands and give you a very long, gaping sort of look. He says, pointedly, “What the fuck?” And then he shakes his head disbelievingly. “No way.”

You cross your arms. “Yes.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“ _ No! _ ”

“ _ Yes! _ ”

“Well, fuck you!” John takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose, turning to one side and gritting his teeth. You grin triumphantly, viciously even; it’s been a long time since you could get one over him like that, small a thing as it may be, and you’re going to  _ relish _ in it. Your relishing doesn’t last long of course, because you hear another peal of thunder overhead, and it reminds you of what started this in the first place. It reminds him too, since he glares back at you. “We can’t go out in this weather.”

“Oh I’m sorry, but did I hear a  _ we?”  _ You pretend to clean out your auricular cavity with your little finger, pretend to look shocked at the suggestion, a faintly hysterical edge to your voice. “Did I just hear you assume that I would wait for you to grow some fucking  _ globes  _ before going out there and scoring mad fucking haul despite your cluckbeastshit insistence that there might not be a crash just  _ waiting  _ to be looted by an intrepid scavenger such as myself?”

You’re goading him, he probably knows you’re goading him, but he does that little pout he does in lieu of a growl that a proper growl that lets you know you’re  _ winning. _

You grin and go in for the kill, jabbing him in the chest. “Come on, grubfucker, you know me better than that. You’re either going to tell me where that crash is or I’m going to go out there and get myself killed, and Benna will be so upset with you that you’ll have to wait until Jade and Jake come into town before you can so much as set a single human  _ nub _ in the tavern again. She will look balefully at you from across the street, shaking her head and muttering about how you let that troll she knew get his stupid self  _ killed by a rust storm _ .”

He chews his lip, making an uncomfortable noise in the back of his throat, and you would feel bad if you weren’t so  _ desperate  _ to be the first person out there for once; weren’t so desperate to bring back something worthwhile and not feel like your debts were weighing down your shoulders like a half a ton of solid brick.

Your tone softens, just slightly, pleadingly. “Come on, John.”

He doesn’t look at you, but you can tell he hates you just a little too platonically for your tastes right now. You slowly reach for your jacket on the hook, and you know he’s watching your hand. He grumble-sighs in resignation.

“I’m coming with you, and that’s final.” He says, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m coming with you, and I’ll lead the way, and you  _ have  _ to keep me in sight at all times, okay?”

You grin at him and snatch your jacket off the hook, and as quietly as you can so as not to wake Benna, you head upstairs to get your goggles and a scarf. John is still there when you come back down, so you’re at least certain that he’s serious about coming with you.

“One last thing before we go.” You say when he reaches for the door. He turns around and you contemplate the sudden intrusive thought to pull down his mask and kiss him, but instead you shake your head. “I owe you for this, okay?” You say instead.

“I’ll be sure to remember that.” He says, and then the two of you are struggling through the door and through the wind outside. He made sure to park behind the tavern at least, so you have some help getting Benna’s rover out from under the piled up sand on the tarp, which you roll up and put in the rover so it doesn’t blow away. The wind partly masks the sound of the engine as you start it up, and you pray the sand doesn’t jam the mechanisms too hard when you get in the seat. You raise a hand to signal that you’re ready, and he starts to lead.

The storm is worse than you expected. You feel the grit and rust flakes across the exposed skin of your cheekbones and knuckles like the drag of little knives, and you’re sure to be raw with it when you get back. There’s no way Benna isn’t going to notice, and you hope like Hell that you find something good enough that she won’t mind you endangering yourself, John, and two vehicles on this outing.

John is a brownish blur in front of you even when you’re both driving a meter apart, and lightning cracks the sky again. You actually  _ see _ something coming down, a bright streak of light and a flash at the end through the gloom, the sound of it exploding reaching you like a distant thunderclap. Your heart starts to race at the prospect of whatever it is being yours. John can’t hear you but you know he probably saw the flash too, and you hope he’s leading you towards it.

It’s a long way in, being buffeted by hot air and sand. You start to worry about fuel, about food and water. You remember the canteens tucked under the seats, the meal packets underneath it, good enough for only two days if you can ignore your hunger and thirst and the taste of metal in your teeth. There’s a canister of petrol in the back of the rover, but you don’t know if it will be enough to take you into town if you run out. You shake off your worries and focus on keeping your eyes on John, lest you lose him in the wind-stirred sand.

Finally, finally, you smell the telltale burnt-metal and ozone stink of a fresh crash. You see the black, looming shapes of several, jagged, cracked-open  _ things  _ that must have once been part of a ship. John stops in front of you and you check the fuel gauge, but you’re too lightheaded with excitement to register the exact numbers, only that there’s still fuel left. You hope you won’t have to use the extra fuel, though.

But you’re here, in the crash zone, looking up at a string of wrecks fresh from the sky. The ground beneath you crackles as your shoes break up the glassed sand in a way you feel all the way to your teeth. The stink is so much stronger here, leaves you a little dizzy, but to you it smells like victory.


	4. Party Crash(land)er

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost out of buffer chapters, I'd better get back to actually writing for this soon lol.

You both park your vehicles in the crater, in the shelter of one of the larger pieces of wreckage, something that must have once been part of a hull but is now crusty, sheared-off slag. That’s a good sign, though; means whatever broke up in the atmosphere won’t need to be opened up, if you can find it. The metal is still warm to the touch, so it can’t have landed too long ago from when you started off from town, and the sun is a yellowy blot overhead that makes you glad for the storm, since despite the flecks of metal scraping you raw, the cloud cover at least keeps off some of the heat. It won’t be long until it sets, though, and then Benna will notice that you’re gone.

You need to get to work  _ now. _

The storm makes it hard to see, but the two of you can feel around and hold onto each other. Sweeps of working in a mostly featureless swathe of wasteland has given you an impeccable sense of direction, so you can remember where your vehicles are parked, but that won’t help you if they get buried so you made sure to bring canteens and a meal packet each. 

The first things you find are nothing but trash. Of course they are, they’re lumps of melted-down glass and metal, nearly all the plastic burnt up on re-entry and whatever didn’t burn is warped beyond recognition. But the more you look around, the more you find things that were revealed in the impact. Here and there you find half-crushed machinery and exposed tubes and wiring; not worth much in this state, but you pick up some of it with John’s help anyway, lugging the snakelike cables and torn pipes to your vehicles.  _ Then _ you start finding the good stuff.

There’s a medicine box, spilled open, but the stuff inside survived; slightly used spools of surgical thread, an incredibly sharp pair of scissors, several needles, a roll of mediplast, tubes of skin gel and antiseptics. There are even a few bottles of vitamin and mineral supplements, unopened. John helps you put the stuff back in the box and lock it up, and you grin when you discover it has a strap spooled into the side so you can unroll that, clip it to a hook on other side, and sling it over your shoulder like a bag.

There’s a portable water reclaimer, the kind that draws water out of the air and filters piss. There’s sand in it, but they’re built to filter pretty much anything, so you and John load that up into the back of the buggy along with a couple of at  _ least  _ a half-gallon of clear fluid in much smaller bottles. You don’t know what the bottles are made of, but you can’t so much as dent them even though they’re clear enough to see the contents through. When you finish what’s inside them, they’re going to be worth a lot, too.

(You consider that, with the strength of the bottles themselves, what’s inside those bottles might not be water but  _ fuel _ , and that would make them  _ even more _ precious a commodity. This might even be enough for Benna to consider your debt paid. She might even pay  _ you. _

But that’s getting too far ahead of yourself. You need to get your haul home safely first, and  _ then  _ you can figure out what it’s all worth.)

You and John round the corner and find something that stops you in your tracks entirely.

It’s a massive, seamless, metallic-looking orb. That’s pretty much the only thing it can be described as. Wires trail off from the back where this thing was ripped out of something, probably moorings in the ship, and it’s left a furrow in the crater’s blackened ground where it rolled off. You can see your reflection in it, distorted somewhat by sand and soot, and you reach out to scrub some of the dirt off to get a better look. It’s weirdly cool, despite the warmth of everything around it.

The orb is useless in its current state, of course. You couldn’t get it to move with you and John and several others if you’d tried. But the stuff it’s made of is bound to be worth a lot, either as building material or something else, if you can just cut some away. You hope your laser cutters are good enough for the job, as you knock on the surface to try and find a weak spot.

It’s hopeless, you and John realize, after going all the way around; nothing is really audible over the wind, much less any echoes you two might be able to make, so you’re going in deaf and blind. Hopefully it doesn’t just fall on you as soon as you make any decent headway into cutting it open, but you make sure by going around it where it’s left a furrow so you know which way it’s rolling. You hook your cutter up to your battery pack when John does, give him a thumbs-up, and set to work.

Your cutter is warm in your hands by the time you smell something that isn’t burning metal. It smells something like oil, actually, and you take a step back in worry. John seems to notice too, looking at you and holding up his cutter. Something thick and sticky leaks out from the gouges you’ve made in the surface. You reach out a hand and scoop some in your fingers, holding it under your nose for a sniff.

It doesn’t register, but you hear a burble and a hiss, and the smell of burning oil grows stronger.

Both you and John look at each other and dive behind the dubious cover of another piece of wreckage as the gouges you’ve made expand and split off from the main portion of the orb. Fluid dribbles down the sand in thick, oozing rivulets, and you worriedly wipe the remainder of the stuff on your hand onto the flaking chunk of metal you’re hiding behind. What the hell  _ is _ this thing, a fuel cell? Are you going to die in a horrible, fiery explosion? This wouldn’t be the first time facing your own, fragile mortality for either of you, but your pusherbeat is thudding so fast that you’ve almost forgotten about the rust storm, the rover and the buggy, Benna’s disapproval.

You hear a sickening  _ splat _ as something comes away from the orb where you’d sliced through.

In a minute or two, John peeks over the edge of your shelter, and taps you on the shoulder after a little longer than that. Seeing as his head hasn’t been blown off, you consider it at least relatively safe. You sidle up next to him and get up on your knees, fingers clutching the edge of your makeshift wall so hard that you can feel the ragged edge digging slightly into the joints.

There’s nothing. Or at least there’s only what you expect to be there, mostly. The orb is split open like a fruit rind, what you’d once thought was metal gone soft and squishy on the ground. You still have no idea what it is, but it appears to be  _ dissolving  _ into the goop you’d sniffed at, and you worry that it might be acidic, but you don’t feel any telltale itching or soreness on your finger so you don’t worry about that too much. There are depressions in the blackened sand, pooling with the ooze, and you’re not sure if you’re seeing things or if there really are  _ three _ sets of prints in the sand.

You hear coughing to the side; wet, ragged, horrible retching and what sounds suspiciously like sobs and whimpers. Your head whips around so fast that you nearly get whiplash, and you see someone on hands and knees in the dirt, coughing and heaving the ooze. They must have come from inside the pod. It must have been some kind of crash safety device.

They notice you. You raise your laser cutter, hoping they don’t know what it is; it’s too small to be a proper gun, but it’s fooled a few people before and you know how to override the limiters on the fly to make it a makeshift weapon anyway, if kind of a shitty one. Wide, terrified eyes meet yours and you wonder if you looked like that when Benna dug you out of your ship three sweeps ago, shivering and scared and small.

But they aren’t much like you, because the next time you blink they’re on their feet, their eyes covered in dark lenses, their face impassive. You can see them shaking still, their breath too fast, their hands clenching and unclenching as if wanting for a weapon they don’t have.

But they’re taller than you and they’re moving.

You don’t think; you lunge, blunt little horns angled down as you charge and get them right in the middle. You feel something wet splash across your back as they retch again, and then you’re both down on the sand. John is shouting something over the wind, but you’re not thinking, you have the cutter aimed right at their- his, up close now, stubble on his jaw not unlike John’s, but he’s Lalonde-pale where his skin is exposed and his hair is the same shade of ashy yellow- you have the cutter aimed at his neck and he’s frozen. You can see his eyes through his shades but you can’t tell what colour they are with the plastic in the way.  _ Your  _ hands are shaking.

The stranger holds his own hands up to show you he’s unarmed. “Hey.” He says, soft and slow like someone facing down a frightened animal. It makes you snarl. “Easy, man, ‘s not like I planned to crash here. This takes me by surprise, too, and I’d rather get out of it alive.”

“Give me one good reason not to slit your throat and loot the corpse.” You hiss, and hope you don’t sound scared, because this is the first time you’ve ever seen someone survive a crash besides yourself and he doesn’t look half as fucked up as you were from the landing, jelly orb or no. 

He pats around his hips, just shy of your knees, and pulls something out of the goopy mess of his flight suit. It catches the light with the crinkled sheen of plastic foil. You pause and he waves it in front of your eyes a little, probably to check that you’re interested.

“You like Snickers, yeah?” He says, gulping. His fingers tremble as he unwraps the first inch or so of candy to show you that- holy shit, fuck yes- this is real, you can smell the chocolate and caramel like a punch in the snout after literal months without tasting anything the proper kind of processed-sugar sweet. You can feel your mouth filling with drool. “That’s right, take it in. If you let me live, and take me somewhere safe, I’ll let you have this.”

You frown and press the cutter under his chin a little harder. “And what’s stopping me from killing you and taking it anyway?” You growl, and distantly you’re a little beside yourself, threatening a guy for a bar of candy.

He tilts his head down, chin tucked against his chest, trapping the cutter against the meat of his neck. You’re struck by the colour of his eyes as he looks you in yours over the rim of his shades, very nearly as red as your own. “I can eat  _ really _ fast.”

You snort.

_ “And,” _ He adds, a hand on your wrist when you ghost a finger over the trigger. “There’s more where that came from. But you’ll never find it before it gets either picked off or desiccated without my help,  _ and  _ I know where to find other stuff you might like. I mean come on, I’ve come across scavengers before so I know what you’re after, and I know this ship better than anyone else alive. Shit, man.” He rubs his hand over his face to get rid of some of the filth before putting his shades back on properly. “I spent three months on the run in that cramped piece of fucking garbage; I think I know what I’m talking about.”

You make a show of contemplating with a soft hmm, but John finally makes his move. He whistles hard over the sound of the wind before he stands up and dusts off his knees, ambling towards the both of you. 

“So, yeah, that’s a thing that happened! But also we’ve been sitting in a rust storm for a pretty long time and Benna’s probably awake now, and freaking out about where the rover is. Don’t you think, Karkat?” He gestures towards where your vehicles are still parked, and the stuff you’ve already loaded onto them, half-buried now. “Take your candy and come on.”

You look down at the human still holding up the Snickers bar, and you grunt, snatching it out of his hand and pulling away the cutter as you stand. He breathes a little easier as you get off of him, put the cutter back on your belt, and examine your prize. 

It’s real, is all you’re really concerned with. You sniff it and feel just a little giddier at the smell of candy, drag your tongue along the side of it and, to your mild dismay, giggle. Chocolate! Sweet, precious, wonderful chocolate. The last time you had any was after winning a game of high-low against Jade and Jake several months ago, and the smell on the wrappers has long since faded. The Snickers has a lot more going for it than the chocolate coins they’d managed to find.

“Try not to cream your panties over just a lick and a sniff; you might make a guy jealous.” The human says. You glare at him and take a nibble, but all said you  _ do _ have to suppress a small, happy moan at that. It’s sweet and creamy and there’s nuts and caramel in it, you’re going to make this  _ last _ somehow, damnit. There’s  _ probably _ sealed containers in the storage block…

You twist the wrapper closed and tuck it into your jacket pocket, zip it closed so grit doesn’t get into it. You’d hate yourself more than ever if you managed to ruin it. John gestures for you to head towards the parking space again, and you follow, though the human catches your wrist.

It’s weirdly satisfying to hear him go “oof!” when you thump him in the solar plexus on reflex.

“Okay, that wasn’t fucking  _ necessary.”  _ He wheezes, coughs, holds up a hand to tell you to give him a sec. “Jesus. Fuck. I was just going to ask you your name. I’m Dave, and it’s a fucking  _ common courtesy _ to introduce yourself when you’re not out for blood.  _ Fuck, _ you have a hell of an arm.”

“Karkat.” You say, and if you feel just a little bit bad for hitting him, you don’t show it because you’re still feeling protective and defensive of your chocolate, because you’re a wriggler apparently.

“A _ hem _ . If you’re done flirting?” John gestures for the rover and the buggy again, and you roll your eyes at him. But he’s right, so you unload the sand and get on the rover as John does the same for the buggy, and Dave decides to sit next to you in the cramped space available for some reason, like a complete idiot. You side-eye him for it. He says nothing, merely adjusts his shades.

The storm is moving on from this area; you’re loathe to get back in the thick of it, but you have to, to get back to town. You start up the rover and hope Benna isn’t awake yet. Dave looks over his shoulder and watches as the wreckage disappears behind you, and when the wind picks up again, wraps himself in the tarp like a blanket, shivering. The worst of the wind is in town, and you have to squint even through your goggles by the time you get there. You almost feel bad for Dave, with such little protection from the rust flakes on him.

You feel less bad for him when you park behind the tavern and Benna is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed and lips pursed. Then you’re too busy feeling bad for yourself, as she steps out into the tearing wind to help you and Dave put the tarp over the rover again. She doesn’t even look at your haul, and you’re about to mention it before she gives you The Look again.

John, the lucky bastard, has fucked off back to his place, though you suppose Jane is going to give him the same treatment so you can take a slight, bitter comfort in that. You and Dave step inside, and shake rust and sand from your hair. Benna shuts the door with a snap.

She looks you over once, and the silence hangs over you like a sack of bricks until she chuckles. “Get cleaned up and  _ then _ tell me what the fuck you were thinking.” She says, gesturing at the magnet chamber in the corner. The knot in your gut eases only a little.


	5. The Best of The Situation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heads up! This is going to be the last update for a while as I try to get my shit together. Right now I'm a little sick, and besides that I have commissions to take care of, so getting better and finishing those commissions will take priority over my other fics for the moment. Sorry!
> 
> I really hope to get back to work on these, though, and I'm really glad there's been as much interest in this as there has been. Thanks to everyone who's read, left comments, and/or left kudos on this fic, it really means a lot every time someone does! See you soon!
> 
> (And if you see any errors, feel free to comment; chances are I just missed it.)

There’s nothing to be done for the gunk staining your jacket now except maybe sunning it dry and scraping it off, which makes you grimace because you know it’s going to leave a patchy ring of stain even if the smell goes away. At least you won’t lose the jacket, though, so that’s some good news.

You’re painfully aware of Benna behind you as you peel it off and hang it on the hook by the front door, though your scarf and goggles stay around your neck. Dave looked a little bewildered by the magnet chamber, but there are only so many settings that work, so once Benna’s convinced him to take his shades off, he can get rid of most of the rust- and by extension the protective gel- on his own. While that’s happening, you try to sneak back upstairs, but Benna coughs loudly in that way you know is for getting your attention.

“We have a little business to discuss, Kit.” She says, and you don’t have to turn around to know her arms are crossed and her jaw is set. “Why don’t you come down here and introduce me to your foundling?”

“It’s Dave.” Says your ‘foundling’, and when she gives him that baleful look of hers he gulps. “Ma’am.” He adds quickly.

“Better.” She says, and turns to you again. That look promises you’ll be scrubbing sand out of every niche and narrow of the tavern if you resist, so you set your back a little straighter and walk back down the steps. You glance at Dave before you look up at Benna again, and exaggeratedly sweep your arms in his general direction.

“This is Dave, as he just said.” He raises a hand in an aborted wave and you continue. “I found him crawling out of some kind of escape pod out out of a crash site, and by the way, I did not go out there alone like a panrotten idiot as you may expect of me.” She prompts you on by tucking her head down to look at you better. “It was Egbert’s idea. He radioed me after he saw it come down.”

Benna hums inquiringly and glances out the window at the still-swirling storm. Somehow she can still tell the time despite the darkness, because by the way she motions for the two of you to follow her, it’s about time to prepare for the day’s patrons. You could have sworn it was much later. Dave trails awkwardly behind you as you enter the kitchen, where she’s pulled the pot off the stove.

“Keep talking.” She says, bringing down a large, sharp knife and a chopping board from the wall before rooting through a basket for gallowroot. She doesn’t even look at you as she pulls out a woody tuber the size of your arm and three reddish bulbs, though she gestures over her shoulder with the blunt end of the root. “And start scooping the leftovers out of that pot.”

You pull a flattish ladle out of a cupboard and gather the pot between your knees, its contents reeking of stewed vegetables and making you realize how long you’ve spent outside without eating. You look up to Dave, pointing behind him to an old ice cream tub you once found, the lid still intact, and he gets the picture quickly at least, because he sets it beside you while you start ladling out the mushy leftovers, and manages to sit still while you empty the pot.

You summarize for Benna while you scoop, getting greasy soot all over your fingers. John telling you about the crash, the things you found there, the orb and its  _ hatching _ ; admittedly, you gloss over the part where Dave popped out like a fresh grub, but that’s more gross than important. Benna perks up at the mention of the orb, in curiosity or familiarity you can’t tell, but only hums in answer as she deftly peels and chops ingredients, tossing the inedible remains into a bin. It’ll be a couple days still before that Dersite outside of town comes to pick them up for his bleatbeasts.

“And what does  _ he _ have to say about all this?” She asks, when you’ve scraped the pot as clean as you can and she’s done chopping. She gestures at Dave with the knife and you see him go a little stiffer before visibly forcing himself to relax joint by joint, though it’s so fast it’s like a wave of loosening muscle from his head down’ a calculated sort of relaxed.

“I dunno what else there is  _ to  _ say. My dashing rescuer here kind’a summed everything up and wrapped it in a pretty red bow. The wrapping paper has little reindeers and snowmen and other Christmasy shit like that, and it’s only July back on Earth according the in-ship calendar. You know prior to crashing like the time I threw a shitty ren-faire sword at a-”

“ _ Too much _ , apparently.” You say, hauling the now-emptied pot to Benna’s side where she can inspect it.

Dave crosses his arms. “Rude. The lovely lady seems to have been invested in my storytelling, and you just cut me off at the good part. The flow is now deader than Emerian civilization after you trolls took it over, bro, and the culprit is you; you got your murderous little fingerprints all over the crime scene.”

You roll your eyes as Benna snorts a laugh. She pours her ingredients and half a jug of water into the pot before setting it over the stove and holding a hand out for your cutter. You, admittedly, still think it’s kind of badass that she uses a power tool made for shearing through ship parts just for lighting the stove. The flame flickers under the pot.

The whole thing must have taken a little longer than you thought, because now you can hear people coming in, yawns and dragging heels and the occasional, irritable squawk or grunt as someone struggles with the door snapping in the wind. Dave looks out the little window to the kitchen and whistles low at the sudden appearance of several prostitutes and a handful of early risers, the kind of people who _ don’t _ go out into the desert to find somewhat-usable bits of garbage.The tension is starting to creep back into his shoulders, too. Not the kind of person to enjoy crowds, it seems, even little ones.

Benna, still stirring the pot, flicks her chin in an upwards sort of nod at the two of you. “Get him familiar with the menu. I want the two of you bussing tables and taking orders five minutes ago.”

You turn your head to her, looking up at the little upward quirk she has to her lips and the sleepy, serene tilt to her eyes; the look she has, she’s thinking about what she can earn from this.

You probe. “So since you said  _ the both of us _ , I take it that means he’s staying. Where?”

“Not in any of the inn’s rooms of course, and certainly not with me.” She says. You feel a second of precognitive irritation before she even says it. “I’m sure you can figure out some way to make space in the storage room. You were military once, even you can deal with a roommate.”

You  _ fucking _ knew it.

But as much as you consider it  _ your _ space, it’s hers, and you can’t argue with that. You curl your lip in something between a scowl and a pout before turning to Dave.

“We only have one other apron.” You say, as you pull a dingy apron off the wall and throw it at his face. “But these people know me, so  _ you  _ wear it. Now come on, I have to write today’s special on the board.”

Something about the way he catches it so easily annoys you, too.

“Wait a minute.” He says, looking from the apron to you and Benna, who hums softly as she sniffs the stew and adds starch, more spices, and an egg the size of her fist. “Wait a minute. Not that I don’t appreciate the chance at employment at this fine establishment- with room and board even- but you just met me and I’m suddenly supposed to work here? What if I’ve got places to be? What if I had plans of heading off to another town or hitching a ride with a rogue spacer?”

You would answer him if Benna didn’t chuckle and turn around, hip-checking you very nearly into the next cabinet. You manage to catch yourself and look at her, the friendly smile that carefully hides her teeth and the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes that don’t hide the way they gleam.

She puts her hands on her hips and closes her eyes. The shake of her head and the sag of her shoulders is exaggerated, and she purses her lips just as theatrically. When she opens her eyes again she smiles the way a consoling mortician might. “Dave-  _ sweetheart _ \- you’re free to go whenever you want _. _ I can’t stop you, and Kit can’t stop you. What would we do, tie you down? You look like the kind of young man who could get himself out of just about anything!”

There’s no threat in  _ those _ words. Benna doesn’t tie people up, wouldn’t even if Sheriff Bentley and the monster he calls a barkfiend allowed it. But Benna doesn’t need threats to get a point across, as exemplified by when she gestures at the door and tilts her head to Dave.

“The thing is, though,” She starts counting off fingers. “You got no money, you got no friends, you didn’t even  _ mean _ to show up here and you got no idea where anything even is. If you hitched a ride out of Caltira on the train or with someone who didn’t crash into the rust plains, you’d be just as shit out of luck as you would be here, except then you wouldn’t have the kindness of Kit’s shrivelled little troll heart to look after you.”

Benna pulled much the same speech with you when you’d recovered in her care, with the addition of you owing her after all the resources she’d put into helping you heal; if not your life, then at least the cost of medicine, water, and food. Dave takes it better than you did, looking pensive rather than wincing with every point. It probably helps that you didn’t need to put him back together after the crash, so he’s got less to owe, if anything.

She raises her arms to either side then, a gesture for him to look around as she puts on her best impression of amazement. It kind of reminds you of infomercial salestrolls. “I honestly can’t see why you would  _ want _ to leave, at least yet, when you ain’t got the resources to, and here we are offering you a place to stay while you get your feet back under you.”

She turns around and gets back to stirring the soup, and Dave can’t see her face but you can. She looks right at you, her smile soft and satisfied with the surety that she’s got him now. “I’ll even make a deal with you. Since Kit found you, and didn’t use up any of my stuff besides the gas it would have taken him to get back safe and sound with a haul anyway, you can earn your stay  _ and  _ keep tips.”

You do your best not to snort. Dave still looks like he’s thinking about it, but even you get to keep tips and the people of Caltira are stingy enough with them that you know he’ll make peanuts even if he doesn’t have the disadvantage of being a troll.

Besides. You’re not sharing your supplies, and he’ll learn one of the quicker, if more dangerous, ways to get any earnings is scavenging soon enough.

But Benna mentioning a haul, and that line of thought, immediately reminds you of the rover- which in turn, reminds you of your  _ actual _ haul, and more importantly, the  _ corpse. _

_ “Shit.” _ You hope the tarp was enough to keep sand out of most of it. Chances are the answer is no, so you cough loudly to get their attention for a second. “I’m going to check on the stuff I brought back and the corpse from last night. You guys come to an agreement; even if he lives next to me, I don’t really give a shit right now, there was a water reclaimer in there.”

Dave gapes a little while you put your outdoor gear back on, you hear him say something like “wait, did he just say a  _ corpse _ ” as you wind the scarf around your mouth as you walk, but Benna waves you off because she knows you’ll come back. She says something to him that you can’t hear over the wind when you manage to get out the door.

The sun manages to peek in through the storm, just enough that you’ve got a couple meters of visibility despite the flecks of metal and grit flying all over the place. The filthy wind makes your exposed arms itch something awful, too, and you have to grit your teeth and resist the urge to scratch yourself raw because of it.Part of the tarp has come loose and is flapping wildly in the wind, and you grab hold of it and peel it back further, carefully so the gale doesn’t snatch the whole damn tarp away. Your loot is coated in a fine layer of reddish-brown dust, but it doesn’t look like the rust has managed to get  _ in _ any of it.

(You think of your Snickers, hidden in your jacket pocket. It can’t have melted into the fabric yet, right?)

The corpse, though, is half-buried in the sand and has partially rolled out of the sheet you wrapped it in. You wrinkle your nose and dust it off, and for a half second when you look into its face, you expect it to grab you. You shudder and berate yourself; you’re not a wriggler anymore damn it, this shit shouldn’t phase you. So you drag the corpse and its shitty makeshift shroud behind the dubious cover of a couple more crates, behind the rover, and hope you don’t forget about it and run it over as soon as the storm clears.

You fetch a couple of the bottles from the rover before you head back inside, though. Benna claps Dave on the shoulder and laughs.

“What’d I miss?” You ask, once you’ve spat out a mouthful of dirt and cleaned yourself off in the magnet chamber  _ again _ . It makes your horns prickle, especially the notches where they didn’t heal right.

“Nothing important.” Benna picks up one of the bottles and holds it up to the light. “Now what did I say about those customers? You’ve kept them waiting! Go on, I’ll appraise these when they’re satisfied!”

You grunt, about as gracefully as a tuskbeast, and Dave turns to you and fastens the apron around his waist. He gestures with a tilt of his head to the door as you get presentable again, this time without the distraction of any questions and hypotheticals he might have. You take a deep breath and slide out of the door and into the warm bustle of the tavern proper. You also neglect to recall that nobody new has worked at the tavern since you.

Dave is  _ immediately _ noticed.


	6. Getting Started

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure this is the point where we just accept that these chapters will come as they come. Still working on everything else and a few other projects like commissions aside, and I got a new laptop so I can stream art now, so there'll definitely be more focus on that, but I've definitely still got the love of writing in me.
> 
> If you're reading this, thank you for sticking by me on this fic, I really appreciate it. ;w;
> 
> (Side note, I _really_ enjoyed writing Jessamine.)

There’s an interested, excited clamouring from the crowd, interspersed with various solicitations; a lot of “over here, honey” and “hey, sailor” and a few others. Caltira is a small enough town with few enough random visitors that this is to be expected, all of which _you_ had been subjected to when you were first introduced to the inhabitants in trial by table-bussing.

“Hey there, cowboy.” Jessamine, ever front-and-center with new faces, looks Dave up and down with a giggle and bats her eyelashes at him, twisting a lock of hair in her fingers. “Here I thought Karkat was _exceptional._ I didn’t know Benna was only hiring _goodlooking_ new faces. What’s your name?”

Dave doesn’t cringe away from the display, which makes you stop and watch, maybe out of grim fascination and maybe to get a feel for how Dave might react. She isn’t exactly the _worst_ choice for a Welcome-To-Caltira lay, but you still worry for anyone she gets in bed with, and you have at least a couple scars from _your_ initiatory boot-knocking to justify it. He just looks at her over his shades.

“ _Well_ , missy,” He says, in the most painfully exaggerated drawl you’ve ever heard. “The name’s Dave Strider, and I don’t actually see anythin’ on my own person that suggests a cowboy sort’a guy, but if that’s what gets y’all goin’ and maybe gets me a couple tips, I can entertain your particular proclivities for an evenin’. Sound fair?"

Jessamine laughs, tossing her head back with the sharp, squalling offspring of a cackle and a shriek. "I thought _I_ was the hooker here, sweet thing. Do you put on the charm like that for everyone?”

He shrugs, though thankfully he stops exaggerating his accent. “Depends on if I make something out of it or not. You never know, I might have been the favorite callboy this side of the Marina system, or a dangerous ex-con fleeing from the authorities; I mean look at this place, anyone could disappear here. I could be a goddamn Old Terran prince, couldn’t I, sweet thing?”

Jessamine titters in amusement, as do a few others of her colorful cohort of courtesans. Dave tips an invisible hat and _you_ shake your head and cringe a little on the inside, and you staunchly turn your face away before you hear Jessamine calling your name.

“Karkat! Kitten, darling, _please_ tell me where Benna’s been finding you lovely things; I want one for myself!” She laughs raucously, tossing her hair over her shoulder and across her throat like a scarf. “Better yet, why don’t you find me one? There’s bound to be more of you out in the desert!”

Dave mouths “Kitten?” and gives you a look you want to punch off his face. You channel your ire into bantering with the harlot making eyes at him instead.

“Gee, Jess, I don’t fucking know!” You snarl, sharp enough to shear a bleatbeast, as you gather a tray of drinks from the counter where Benna’s left them. You deftly weave through the crowd again on your way to the table this set always goes to, eyes locked on Jessamine the whole time. “I don’t remember volunteering to risk life and limb out in the wasteland for your slavering nook’s rampant desires!”

“Oh, don’t be like that, kitten, you _have_ to share! Didn’t your- what was it? Lupus? Whatever- didn’t your daddy ever teach you to share? You _sweet_ little nibble, you _darling_ thing, you _precious_ , _sparkling_ sweetlet.” She bats her eyes at you and you remember _why_ you risked pailing her when you were young and lonely. “Come on, babykisses, do me a _favor_ , be a gentleman and make your crabdaddy _proud._ ”

She’s fucking deplorable. Sometimes romantically. Most of the time obnoxiously.

You sniff. “Yeah, I’m probably being unreasonable to his spirit, gods of trolls and men rest his weary claws.” Balancing the tray in one hand, you slide the tray’s worth of drinks onto a table with a different gaggle of scavengers that don’t work here playing five-finger-fillet. “Tell you what, if you want to hoist up your petticoats and hitch a ride into a fucking rust storm with some other sponge-dead asshole besides myself, feel completely free! Be my guest, even! I will fund your expedition for desert bulge out of my own, tattered pockets.”

You snatch the knife from one of the scavengers and stab it into her sleeve, right into the table with a satisfying _thunk_ . _She_ swears, as you lean on the handle, still glaring at Jessamine while the scavenger cuts herself free. “Provided you stop calling me these ridiculous pet names.”

“Aww, really?”

“Absolutely not.”

You turn around and collect your tips, rolling them from the tray into your palm and blessedly freeing the scavenger you’d just spooked. Behind you, Jessamine swears and laughs, thumping the table like it’ll help her breathe if she smacks it hard enough.

“Come on, Vantas, you don’t gotta be like that.” The scavenger says; Mals, you know her, despite the rusty smudges across her eyes and the bruises on her mouth. She checks the point of her knife before looking back up at you. “This is the best knife I’ve ever found, too; you’ll ruin it doing that.”

“As if you won’t by stabbing the fucking tables? And what have I told you about playing the fucking knife game on any table but the cork one?” You gesture one-handed with the fistful of coins at the cork table, really just a cork board held up by some stools and tape. “Fuck you, Mals. And stop getting in fights over shiny garbage, you look like shit.”

“You don’t know me. And you’re a scavenger too, assmunch; garbage is our _lives_.” She mumbles something sleepy into her mug, probably something about you not being her moirail. She’s human, she doesn’t even know what that means, probably. At least she stops playing, and her buddies are happily distracting Jessamine’s.

It takes you a few minutes and a half-dozen orders to realize Dave fucking ditched you while you were chewing out Jessamine and Mals. It takes you another half hour and the rest of the orders, or at least as many as you can manage in that amount of time, to trudge upstairs and try to find him.

You don’t have to look long, at least; he’s by the stairs, and has apparently been there the entire time just watching you do your job. You don't have it in you to be forgiving right now, either.

“The fuck have you been standing around for?” You gesture sharply at the tavern proper. “There’s tables to bus, orders to take, and tips to collect, you indolent shitroach, and last I checked, it's nowhere near time for these people to fuck off to their jobs, and even if it was _we’d still have to do ours_ because half of them are scavenging losers that can't go out in this weather!”

Lightning crackles outside as if to punctuate your point, close and bright and blue. Someone swears as a tankard clatters and no doubt spills. “Hey, Vantas! We need a refill!”

“Hold your shit for a second, there’s only one of me right now!” You yell back, before you turn back to hiss in Dave’s infuriatingly impassive face.

He whistles low. You snarl in frustration.

“Look, I know, it's probably a _little_ overwhelming at _least_ but you're getting used to it fast or were both going to-”

“Can I ask you a favor?” He says, rubbing his temple. “Could you give me like, ten minutes to get the ground back under me? I literally crashed on this planet maybe an hour ago. I think I can be excused a little fuckin’ time to acclimatize. I can bus like a whore with due rent if the plates were blowjobs and bussin’ was suckin’ but I'm still getting used to the texture of your grody-ass atmosphere here so I think I could use a momentary breather, yeah?”

You stop, and stare, and suddenly feel like the biggest pile of garbage on the entirety of Antoren-3. Here he is just freshly crashed onto an unfamiliar planet, and here _you_ are demanding he work his ass off when you spent at least three months lying around drugged to the gills when you first showed up, and it was only three months because Benna salvaged your osseous menders and you were too stubborn to stay down for longer.

Sure, the circumstances are a little different- he doesn’t have several broken bones and a few dislocated joints to top it all off, for one- but you still feel shitty for it. You want to squish the thought under your heel, but instead you grunt at him and take the tray from his hands.

“Go upstairs and to the left. If you find a block full of crates with a pile of stuff in the corner, that’s mine and you can lie down on the pile for a while.”

“Isn’t that a little soon?” He says, as you turn to leave. You raise an eyebrow and look back to him.

“For what?” You grumble.

“Nevermind.” He says, and then adds at the end, “Thanks.” It sounds… somehow less guarded than everything else he’s said so far, so you decide to take it as genuine. Maybe. Mostly.

You wait until you hear footsteps going up the stairs before you get back into the thick of things, of people making orders and bad jokes and makeshift music out of tabletops and whatever instruments they’ve managed to bring with them. It’s a discordant fucking mess, but when you think about it, it’s not so bad.

“Hey, Kit! There’s a tip in it for you if you tell us something good about bug baby Hell! And make it dirty this time!”

“Hell’s right here, asswipe; just turns out I’m better suited to Hell than Paradise! Do you want something new or something I’ve rehashed so often I could recite it half-asleep?” You snarl at a drunk scavenger moving to pinch your ass, and to spite him, you sit in his friend’s lap and get ready to tell stories of Alternia. Tips are in traded treasures, bits of salvage, and drinks you’ve helped Benna brew yourself, warm and bittersweet. Coins and twists of wire press into your hands, and you stash them away in your apron for later as you regale the noisy crowd.

“And that’s why I had to forever reconsider telling someone to fuck his lusus.” You chug a glass and slam it down to the laughter of your audience, and you don’t know when it started to feel more like _home_.

~!~

You don’t know how much time has passed between storytime and more orders. Rush hour ends soon enough, though, and then it’s just cleaning tables while hookers gossip and eventually disperse, and scavengers play cards or darts or five-finger-fillet no matter how often you tell them to cut that shit out. Shits given are inversely proportional to intoxication, though, so the grousing is largely out of habit.

The storm’s mostly abated and the daytime workers have left by the time you head upstairs, sore and buzzed and weighed down with tips. You’ll have to count them out, separate what’s worthless from what you can fix or what you can give to Benna, if there’s anything you still need to give after today’s haul, but you can do that later; right now, you want to lie down and nap for a few minutes. You go out with the scavengers come sundown, after all, and you’ve been on your feet this whole time.

You’re immensely glad that your alcohol tolerance has gone up since you started, or you’d be fighting hangover immediately upon waking after this. Now you can nap without repercussions.

Or you could if there wasn’t Dave sitting on your pile wide awake. “I heard you come in.” He says, quietly, wide-eyed, like he’s not really there.

“And?” You narrow your eyes. “Weren’t you supposed to be acclimatizing?”

He seems to snap out of it when you speak at least. He’s looking right at you now, and he breathes slower, sighs in relief like he doesn’t want to. “Jegus fuck. Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

“Lie back down, you idiot. Who the Hell else would I be except maybe Benna?” You’re aware that his reaction probably isn’t rational, but you didn’t know what else to say.

He flops back down and winces, digging a bolt out from under him and dropping it on the floor before throwing an arm over his eyes. It’s dark enough in the block that it isn’t really necessary, though; he’s drawn the curtains over the window, and sun’s not setting yet but it’s slanted away from your side of the building, casting it all in shadow, and the rattling of sand on the outside walls reminds you that even if it’s not going to strip the flesh from your bones anymore, that rust storm still has a ways to go.

You’re too tired and too warm to bother shoving him off, so you drop next to him and untie your apron, dropping it in a sacklike heap on your workbench. Next come your boots, and while you’re unlacing them, you feel a prickle on the back of your neck and notice he’s looking at you from under his arm.

“Let me guess, too soon for your delicate human sensibilities?” You ask, straightening up as you pull your boots off. You wiggle your balance nubs in relief.

“I just got here and we’re already sleeping next to each other; oh good sir, you rapscallion, as much of an oxymoron as that kind of is.” He huffs and lowers his arm over his eyes again. “And disrobing your ankles in front of me, too; oho, how risque.”

“Keep this up and I’ll assume you’re completely fine and you can come scavenging with me in a couple hours.” You straighten up and peel your shirt off. You don’t have to be able to see to know he’s probably looking at you, burn scars and bullet wounds and all. You’re kind of a mess under your shirt. He at least only whistles when you’ve got your shirt off. “What _now?_ ”

“Just admiring your roguish charms.” He drawls, and then yawns. “It’s not every day I have an attractive troll undressing only hours after meeting me, you know; I get that I’m a hot piece of ass and have a killer personality besides, so I’m not complaining, but it’s definitely a record-breaker for me.”

A younger you would have blushed and spluttered. Today you roll your eyes.“Don’t get any ideas. Normally I’d sleep without pants, too, but _one_ of us has to have some sense of fucking propriety.”

“Mh.” He’s already drifting off. Fine, whatever. It feels awkward to sleep right next to him so you rearrange part of the pile he isn’t on, careful to make sure it doesn’t just collapse, and curl up on that like a grub. It’s too warm to stay like that, you know; you’re going to wake up tangled in your stuff and grumpier than ever. You glare at him where you lay.

“What?” He asks.

“You’re in my spot. Now go back to sleep.” You hiss.

You wait until his breathing evens out before you shut your eyes. The sound of the storm slowly ebbs away. The smell of old, burnt metal remains.


End file.
